Iron Kingdoms - Mechanika n' Mayhem

Day 2

Once we got back to our current place of residence, and after a well deserved rest, we discussed what we might do with such a oddity while Drake and Stene went to see ’bout our charter. I was a bit worried that Stene wanted to keep the cortex for his own elvish purposes, but it was about that time the pair returned bringing us news that the cortex was indeed not found, all thanks to one handsome devil, and that the order guards we rescued were being held prisoner. Once Rorke was done talking with a goblin of whom was trying to get his men released, he drew us up our charter, on the premise we find and return the cortex to him since his men were already stretched thin. Of course Drake said we would do our best. It was a sure win seeing as how we already had the damn thing.

But it don’t end there, as they were commin’ back to tell us the news they ran into that goblin, and Stene decided he would make his own offer to the order involving the cortex. The damn fool goin’ and double dealin’ over the same item. Though I might have done the same thing considering the Lieutenant was a total douche-bag. But he had a plan, one that quite liked too, involving makin’ a fake cortex. Somethin’ like that is well within our ability to create, provided it didn’t have to actually work.

Then to top it off as those two were returning to Drake and myself with the news, they get jumped by a few stragglers of the pirates we killed the day before. Wish I was there to give ‘em a taste of what their boss got, but from what I heard they hardly put up a fight. Drognun charged in and took two of em out before they had a chance to blink, and Stene ran in behind taking one on the flank, then used some of his fancy warcaster magic on the other. They prolly didn’t even work up a sweat taking them out, ah well.

So a few crowns and a few hours of metal poundin’ later we had ourselves a decent duplicate cortex, one that even fooled Drake and Drognun, though to be honest they aren’t really the sharpest tools in the workshop, but not everyone was born to work mechanika.

We intended to give the fake one to Rorke, since he seemed the least likely to know exactly what he was lookin’ at. Though the problem with the fake was that it didn’t glow, and I was pretty sure he knew that little bit of info, so we put the fake core with the real one in the lockbox in hopes the necrotite would infuse some of its deathly energies into the blank runeplates. And wouldn’t ya know it, it actually worked! Well sort of, its glow wasn’t nearly as bright, but the damn thing did glow which was far more than I expected.

We just needed to put it into its own container, or more precisely put the original cortex into a new container. We were gonna give the fake core in the original box to the lieutenant, since he probably knew what the box looked like. Then give the real cortex in a new box to The Order of the Golden Crucible, of which Stene managed to get half the payment up front the day before to help “procure it from the black market”. So a couple more hours of hammering some more metal and BAM, we got ourselves a nice spiffy box to keep the necrotite at bay.

I opted to go with Drake, bringing Bazil along in case things got crazy. Also it never hurts to run yer ‘jack now and then to keep things in working order. When we arrived Rorke seemed pretty happy ’bout seeing the box, though I imagine he was more surprised at how fast we managed to find the thing. I had my fingers crossed that he didn’t really know mechanika too well cause no sooner than I put the box on the table he was reachin’ for the latch to open it. Course to keep appearances Drake and I both backed up a bit, he barely got the lid open before he slammed it back down. I swear my heart skipped a beat there thinkin’ “Shit, he’s smarter than we thought.” Boy was I wrong, seeing as he had a huge grin and seemed quite happy.

Drake did some talkin’ after that, and Rorke gave us a few crowns for our “trouble” obtaining the parcel. My comrade informed me of how he managed to get us paid for our efforts, though it wasn’t as much as he wanted and I made sure to get into a huff over how we got “screwed”. Ah the power of a language barrier.

While we were doin’ this Drognun and Stene delivered the real thing, of which went off without a hitch and not only did they make good on their payment, they also opened up their scrapyard to us. And I’m sure an outfit like the crucible has quite the collection of scrap for a mechanick such as myself. Once that was taken care of the two went to the port authority, and bought that old barge we cleared the rabble from. And to put the cherry on top of all that, they got Bazil a fancy new crane! Now thats some friends for ya, workin together like a well oiled machine. Hell now we cam scrap, bodge, and repair just bout anything that doesn’t require a workshop with the tools we now have.

After inspecting the infernal Cryx cortex I decided it was not a suitable vessel for your memories. The dark energies entombed within it seemed to taint all that came in contact with it. Your temple should be made of something far more divine.

My companions and I were put in an uncomfortable position yesterday. A snake in the grass lieutenant named Rorke, who originally tried to use us to obtain the core, once again put us down the road to deliver it to him. This time he held our Mercenaries Wright as collateral. Unfortunately for him, I had the God’s favor. We already had the infernal device, and had no intentions of delivering it to him.

I came by chance to meet meet a ranking member of the Order of the Golden Crucible, at Rorke’s headquarters no less. The alchemist and his ken were also interested in retrieving the core. He, unlike the lieutenant, I believed would actually destroy the device.

My comrades and I concocted a faux core. In fact Koralex and I did quite the magnificent job. Though the runes were etched in Shyr, I doubt the imbecile Rorke could tell the difference from Cryx. It almost sprang to life when it came in to contact with the necrotite energies in that evil Cryx core. We delivered our ruse to the dolt the next day, and he was none the wiser.

We delivered the core to the Order who assured us it would be destroyed and paid us rather handsomely for our effort. They also provided us with an access to their scrap yards.
Not that they day wasn’t busy enough, we also acquired a ship. While it may not be much, I’m sure a crew with two very skilled mechanics can have it “ship shape” in no time. I’m sorry sweetie, I know you hate my puns.

The nights here in Corvis have been mild, yet I feel chilled to the bone without your warm flesh next to mine.

I have met up with an unlikely band of mercenaries. It was more fate than anything. I sought out someone who had inroads in to the pirate community, to help me track those who took you from me. What I found was a scruffy dwarven pirate named Drognun Mastbreaker. I believe he will prove to be quite useful. The other members of his crew are Koralex McKinzie a trollkin mechanic and Drake Shadewrath a very shady human. I’m not overly found of the filthy human, but for your sake I keep my rage at bay.

I almost lost my composure on our first mission. I nearly killed a helpless human alchemist. Thankfully he died before I could finish the task. Every day without you is a struggle. We had been sent to fetch a box from him by a town guard. Unbeknownst to us we were not the only ones. A group of thugs had got there first and in the struggle with the alchemist, blew up the building. The alchemist ran out of the burning building.

My first instinct was that this was a trap set by the filthy human. I ran to slay him for his cowardice, but he was dead by the time I reached him. After I investigated the scene, I could see that it was in fact an accident, the alchemist was stabbed and had stumbled over his table, causing the explosion. You, as always, are right. I am too hasty in jumping to conclusions.

We followed the tracks of the mercenaries to the docs, where we found them on a run down barge. My crew dispatched the bunch with hardly a sweat. We were quite surprised with what we found on the boat. It was a Cryx cortex. I have yet to investigate it closely, but I believe it may be of sufficient quality to bring you back to me. The question is weather I can cleanse it of the fowl necrotite energies it is imbued with.

Day 1

Today I met up with a group of other wanna-be mercs and, unlike the rest of the city, these ones actually understood the Khadoran I was speaking. I swear, a Trollkin can’t catch a break in a city; if its not my appearance scaring off those I might be able to talk to, its the damn language barrier preventing communication in the first place!

That said, these guys seem a little… off. Yeah I’m not the finest piece of regenerated troll flesh but we got ourselves an Iosan Warcaster; Stene Garwind, who has a vendetta fer humans. Then we have Drake Shadewrath a Human, yeah..a human, who seems to be pretty shady, but he and I have some history at least so he can’t be too bad. Though that might be why the Iosan doesn’t try to rip his lungs out, but I could be wrong. A Dwarven Pirate Captain by the name of Drognun Mastbreaker who seems to be without a ship and crew..Though I guess that’s where the rest of us come in. He seems like he knows what he is talkin’ about when barking out orders, that and they are simple enough to follow. And lastly there is Bazil, my laborjack, and myself Koralex McKinzie, and if ya didn’t figure that out yet yer either lame or learnin’ to read.

‘Course this group suits me just fine, it’s a nice mix of people and talent. And havin’ been around the elders, learning the old ways, I came to realize just how closed off our kind is to the outside world. Though having been screwed over by the humans more than once in our history I can see why the Kriels would prefer to distance themselves. And with this new age of mechanika, I fear that those of my people whom don’t at least try to accept it, will be destroyed by it.

So on to the day’s events! So it turns out, that in order to get legal work, we gotta get ourselves a Mercenary Charter. Damn cities and their regulations but I sure as hell don’t wanna get into trouble trying to make a few crowns. Hell it was hard enough bodgin’ Bazil into working order with the few crowns I had after he damn near drilled a hole through his Warcaster’s skull, though that woulda been quite a sight to see.

But I digress, this Lieutenant fella, by the name of Rorke, promised us a charter if we helped him out. One of those, “You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours” kinda situations. Told us that we had to go procure this lock-box from an alchemy shop not too far from the docks and then deliver it to some brigands whom had his family held hostage. We of course agreed to the terms, after having Drake play translator between us since he was the only one that could understand the Cygnaran speaking officer. Also we were not to open the box or tell anyone about this transaction, as it might get his family killed or land him in a bad situation with his captain.

We travel to the shop, of which is closed down and guarded by two men. I tried to greet them in a friendly manner but they were havin’ none of that. Seems they were members of the Golden Crucible, or some such thing and no one was allowed entry. So we backed off some and Drake proposed that someone sneak in and steal the box. And with him bein’ the sneakiest one of us, he got to go. Though no sooner than he had gotten next to the building the damn thing exploded! Blew the place into splinters, throwing the two guards to the ground and Drake into the wall of the building next door. Some poor fella came staggering out on fire, then collapsed in a heap with a dagger wedged between his ribs.

We inspected what was left of the building, managed to figure out the explosion was due to some chemicals getting knocked down onto the floor creating an extremely volatile mixture, likely due to the poor man who was stabbed falling into them, as well as some footprints that lead straight to the docks down the street. The two guards seemed to have figured this out already and took off ahead of us. We gave chase and came across a floating heap of a boat, poor thing looked like it could barely sail a calm lake let alone a river or the ocean. But the footprints lead straight there but it was clear they didn’t want company as there was no easy way onto the ship.

Thankfully the jump from the dock to the boat was an easy one, I was a little worried ’bout the Dwarf but he flew over the gap like a seadog boarding a ship full of treasure. Once we were all across we took note that the two guards were captured and about ta be executed. We drew our weapons and charged right into the fray.

Drake was the first one in, taking out one of the enemy in his wake. I charged in next, though I landed a glancing blow and didn’t quite take my target down. Seems the enemy got too distracted with us to continue with takin’ out the guards and got blindsided by Stene and Drognun, who was barking out the order to attack. Kinda obvious but it works. No sooner than we dispatched a few of the men their big Ogrun of a boss came up to say hello. Dragging some old hag with him, that wench immediately begain chanting and drawing runes in the air. We all knew she was castin’ magick and soon found ourselves fighting the very enemies we struck down. I’m pretty sure we all had a large grin stuck to our faces, and if not I sure as hell did, for we got to smash those undead right back to the ground again. Drognun got beat pretty good by the Ogrun leader but he weathered the attacks pretty well for a dwarf and quickly struck the enemy down. The hag was pretty much a slab of meat now that her minions were taken out and she fell just as quick as she arrived.

We freed the two crucible guards, after I went below deck with Stene to check for any salvage and the lock-box. I found the box in the captain’s quarters but didn’t find anythng of real value. The engine seemed to be in working order though and maybe if we are lucky we may have ourselves a ship. Drake told me not to come topside with the box and I knew my time was limited, so I dug around and found myself a sea bag and some rope, dropped the box into the bag, tied it off and hung it out one of the portholes with a nice slip-knot. I pushed some crates in front of the hole to make spotting it a little less likely, then scooped up the few pistols and cutlasses I could find before going back up. The guards were already up and about, lookin’ for the box so we made haste to leave before ticking them off and when they disappeared below deck I nabbed the bag, stuffed the rope into it and slung it over my shoulder.

As soon a we left that dock we ran right into Lieutenant Rorke with a handful of his guards all cocked and ready to fire. He demanded the box and thanks to Drake’s silver tongue, or at least I presume it was that since the man quickly motioned for his men to go to the ship and let us on our way. Turns out this box had a Cryx warjack core inside, and it makes anyone ill who handles it..Which is likely from the unnatural deathly energies used in most all cryxian mechanika. Rorke did tell us to return upon the morrow to get our papers, but I have a feelin’ things ain’t gonna be that easy.

We ended up getting together a bit later than we wanted, and we had to create a character sheet for one of the players, and I forgot to print one for another player. So while they were doing that, some one of went out and brought back some dinner, fast food if you must know.

So eventually we got the details worked out and we were able to start. I ran a premade introductory adventure entitled “Fools Rush In”. This can be found off of the Privateer Press website as a free download. It details the basic rules of the game and provides you with some premade characters for the players to use.

Everyone decided to create their own rather than use the (badass) premade characters I made (they will be recycled as NPCs), or the premade ones that came with the adventure.
I went with this premade because I figured it would make for a good starting adventure, and its also VERY short, which is great when you know that there are going to be a ton of questions and general confusion. Normally when this happens you end up spending a lot of time looking things up in the rulebook. I anticipated this happening, because this is the first time I’ve run the Iron Kingdoms RPG system, and the first time my players have used it.

I had to make some slight changes to the premade as we went, as it assumes certain things that the players may not do, and that they have certain skills that the premade characters in the adventure have that custom characters don’t necessarily have. But that was something else I anticipated happening.

Despite having to stop a lot and figure things out, the session was a lot of fun, I think everyone involved had a lot of fun, I certainly did. I have a lot of work to do researching rules that I’m either unfamiliar with or are not quite clear, as well as preparing for the next session. But that goes with the territory and I’m confident that I’m up to the task.

A blog for your campaign

While the wiki is great for organizing your campaign world, it’s not the best way to chronicle your adventures. For that purpose, you need a blog!

The Adventure Log will allow you to chronologically order the happenings of your campaign. It serves as the record of what has passed. After each gaming session, come to the Adventure Log and write up what happened. In time, it will grow into a great story!

Best of all, each Adventure Log post is also a wiki page! You can link back and forth with your wiki, characters, and so forth as you wish.

One final tip: Before you jump in and try to write up the entire history for your campaign, take a deep breath. Rather than spending days writing and getting exhausted, I would suggest writing a quick “Story So Far” with only a summary. Then, get back to gaming! Grow your Adventure Log over time, rather than all at once.